“I have lived in Glencullen all my life,” he said to his sister. “In my head, in my heart and soul, that’s where I have been. Down by Glencullen side. Is that good or bad, I wonder? It seems crazy, I know, because I have spent my life anywhere and everywhere but Glencullen. In England, Scotland, Italy. But wherever I have been, I have always been in the glen. I understand what it is. Childhood paradise, childhood memories of happy holidays in the West of Ireland. If anyone goes there now, they would say, ‘What is all the fuss about?’ I know, it looks so poor and forlorn these days, and so many of the people and children who used to live there, are there no longer.”
His sister nodded in agreement. They were sitting in Tricia’s lounge, enjoying a cup of tea in the early afternoon sunshine. “My mind goes back there all the time too,” she said. “The place has had such a pull on all our lives. Not just our family, but all our cousins too. I’ve had this conversation with them as well, and they feel just the same way. The summer trips every year from Manchester back to Mayo.” Her voice trailed off, as she let her gaze travel into the far distance, where the holy mountain of Croagh Patrick stood proud in the western sky, gazing back at her. But in her mind’s eye she was in Erris long ago, fifty miles up the coast, and fifty years ago, and she was a child again, playing the catch game of ‘Bad Eggs’ with her happy Irish cousins.
“I drove down there recently,” Brian continued, “And I had to laugh. The place looked so poor and deserted, all the life gone out of it. Anyone driving through here would just keep on driving, I thought. And yet for us, in those days, it was a place of joy and laughter, teeming with cousins and other young people, a school on the hill, the river babbling its way over shallow ridges of stones and stopping slow in deep pools, by walls of black turf bank. The sun shone, the wind danced in our hair, the mountain on Achill looked down on us approvingly and smiled at our fun. It was all so wonderful. It was like another world.”
“That’s exactly what it was,” Tricia added. “Just like people go to Disneyworld now, to find another world, away from the hard reality of their daily grind, to lose themselves in fairyland.”
“Yes, but our other world was a real world, not a make-believe one. And because it had been our mother’s home, and belonged to our relations, it was in a real sense, ours. And we were received that way. We weren’t resented by our cousins. They were genuinely glad to see us.”
His sister agreed. “And the great thing for us was that it was a real experience of another way of living life. All we knew from September to June was dark Lancashire skies, rain, coalmines and cotton mills, redbrick houses, cobblestones, factory chimneys. Suddenly, come July, we saw green fields, rivers, mountains, endless skies, and we came close to animals, cows and hens and ducks and donkeys. Not in a zoo, but as part of the fabric of life.”
“Of course, for our cousins, it was very different, I suppose,” Brian suddenly realised. “What we felt as magic, they simply took as normal and ordinary. They lived this life all the time. What they didn’t know was the feel of our country, Lancashire.”
“We were very lucky,” Tricia concluded. “To have had that experience every year, as we grew up, to know Lancashire and to know Mayo, that was special, and I think it gives us dual nationality, dual citizenship, of Ireland and England.”
“It’s also our identity,” said Brian. “If anyone asks me, ’Are you English?’ my answer is ‘No’. ‘But you’re not Irish,’ they say. ‘Correct,’ I answer. I feel Lancashire/Irish. That is the truest identity that I am.”
Tricia now turned towards her brother, and like a good barrister, landed on him the vital question. “At the beginning of this conversation you said you think about the glen all the time, and you added, ‘Is that good or bad, I wonder.’ Well now, what do you think? What’s your answer?”
“I think it is good in the main. It is first of all the memory of a happy time in childhood. You can’t knock that.”
His sister nodded agreement.
“And it has also been a refuge in sad times. When your life is bad or upsetting or in confusion, you find your thoughts drifting back to happy places in your life, and you kind of take up residence there for a while. It acts as a safe haven.”
His sister nodded some more, and a slow smile began to creep across her face. She knew he was coming to the ‘but’ part of his reflection.
“Yes, I know,’ smiled Brian. “You can hide in those places for too long, and not come out again. You stay where you feel safe, and you are slow to come out and face the issues of your happiness today. And when you do that, you spoil your memories, because they cannot bear the burden of present sorrows, much less heal them. Happy memories are part of the comforts of life, but you cannot live in the past. That is the real danger in human life. When you begin to hanker for what is gone. That is unhealthy and only serves to poison your spirit.”
“But now that we’re talking about all this, I’ve come to realise that there is another element to all this,” said Tricia. “Emigration.”
Brian started to nod his head in recognition of what his sister was about to say.
“Mammy had to leave the glen like so many more besides her, and before her, and since! Going back was always flavoured by the emigrant’s nostalgia, their love and longing for the home place, and their ever present sadness at the fact that they could not go back and stay.
The country itself was dotted with houses standing empty because people had to leave. Parents cried for children who went to England or America and never came home. We, children, were actually visiting our home place, even though we had not been born there. The nostalgia that lives in us, and that won’t leave us alone, is the yearning for Erris that we were born with! I don’t think I am putting it too strongly.
Just think of all those records that were played on the gramophone in Tyldesley about the Old Bog Road, and Down By Glencullen Side. We didn’t have a chance,” said Tricia laughing now, “We were born to be nostalgic. We are part of that great tribe, the Irish emigrants, and there are millions of us.”
“Yes,” said Brian. “When I was going through my troubles, a friend of mine used to say, partly in sympathy, partly in challenge to me, ‘I live not where I love.’ It was some Irish song that he was quoting to me. Basically he was saying, ’Why are you still here, when you know you should be with the ones you love!’”
They were silent now for a while. Then Brian said,’ I’ve spent a great deal of my life, going back to the West of Ireland, either physically, every year on holiday, or mentally and emotionally, seeking comfort and refuge in troubled times. But I don’t want to do that anymore. Nostalgia is a dangerous country, and I’ve probably seen everything it has to offer. You know what they say about Ireland? All her wars were merry and all her songs were sad. Well, enough’s enough.”
“Bravely spoken,” said Tricia. “ We’ll see how you manage. After all, you might avoid Nostalgia Avenue, but you will never be very far from Memory Lane!”
***
Erris Poetry 